New full-length WALL•E trailer released

Pixar has finally released the full-length trailer for its highly anticipated upcoming animated film, WALL•E. Suffice to say it doesn’t disappoint. It’s cute, funny and damn right gorgeous to look at.

If you haven’t heard of WALL•E before, it’s the story of a robot, the only robot, left on Earth who’s sole task is to clean up the mess left by humans – now living on spaceship and presumably other planets. One day, another robot returns to Earth to check on how things are going. Soon, they become friends and WALL•E hitches a ride to space.

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If you’re not satisfied, then check out the 1080p version at Apple.com.

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Office 2007 interface prototypes

Jensen Harris from the Office 2007 design team gave a very rare presentation at Microsoft’s MIX08 event today about not what the Office 2007 Fluent (Ribbon) interface is about, but instead how it came to be and what other concepts they tried.

He admitted himself it was the first time ever in a public venue where they’ve shown these never-before-seen prototypes of what would become Office 2007. It was great insight into the development process of Office which frankly may not have been very interesting except the last release. Having said that, it was still a very small selection of material out of the 50-60GB worth of prototypes Jensen claims have been archived.

Most of these were presented in sequential order so it was also interesting to see how the design evolved.

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Windows carousel interface concept

On the last day at the Microsoft MIX08 event, Daniel Makoski from the Microsoft Surface team presented a session called “Beneath the Surface: The Natural Experience Vision”. During the presentation, Daniel briefly touched on the work they were doing in Windows surrounding natural user interfaces.

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Most of the presentation was focused around the Surface which is interesting enough in itself, but a few slides in regards to Windows caught my attention. It showed off a range of alternate user interfaces for people who may not have been familiar with the traditional computing paradigm, particularly in developing nations. These are some of the ideas they had.

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Liveblogging MIX08: how-to, tips and tricks

Ever since I read my first Engadget liveblog, it’s something I’ve always wanted to try out for myself. Unfortunately it never seemed like the right time, nor did I have the right tools. Of course, I’m not alone in the liveblogging craze.

Today, Rafael Rivera and I tried for the first time a Rube Goldberg-inspired process which not only made our MIX08 keynote liveblog possible, but also efficient and hopefully fun to read as well.

We had a few people sitting around us wondering what sort of magic we were doing – like a photo I take would automatically appear on Flickr in a handful of seconds and then my blog in a couple of minutes – so I wanted to share how it was all done so you too can try it if you want.

You will need:

  • A dSLR camera (Nikon or Canon)
  • A friend who assumes the role of the writer/photographer (spelling and a firm hand respectively)
  • Two laptops, one for each person (role).
  • Internet connectivity (good upload, download irrelevant, WiFi will work)
  • Most importantly, an interesting event with animated presenters.

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